Cave and Sever, Printers, 18, St. Ann's-street, Manchester.

In all ages of the Christian Church, the hope of a Second Advent of the Lord has, like a bright star, illumined the horizon, and to it the sincere and faithful have directed their aspirations in times of persecution, darkness, or despair. But when or how this event should be accomplished, has been a question enveloped in the deepest mystery. The Apostles expected it in their times; and since then, every extraordinary event has in some way or other been regarded as the certain prelude of the Lord's Second Coming. The inquiry "Can ye not discern the signs of the times?" would appear to be quite as applicable, however, now, as when the Lord uttered it; for though that event, which is the burthen of prophecy, has been accomplished, Christians generally are as "slow of heart to believe," and as unwilling to acknowledge the fact, as were the Jews at the time of our Lord's First Advent. And if we look closely at the views popularly held on this subject, we shall find a singular coincidence in the reasons for rejection, viz., both have expected a temporal deliverer; the one to free them from the Roman yoke, and raise Israel to supremacy;—the other to establish a Millennium upon earth, in which they shall be raised to dignity and honour. Such views show a remarkable resemblance between the two fallen churches-and in each case are the result of ignorance of the true ground of the necessity for the Lord's Advent, and in the latter case, also, of forgetfulness of that important saying, "My kingdom is not of this world."

To the general reader of New Church doctrines, a difficulty of no slight moment presents itself when speaking of the Lord's Second N. S. No. 130.-VOL. XI.

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Advent, as to the necessity for such an event; nor can he always satisfy himself as to the ground of a certain time being chosen for its accomplishment-as being better fitted for it than any other. To these difficulties it is no answer to say that the Lord in His infinite wisdom saw the necessity; and by His infinite wisdom arranged the best time for its accomplishment. This is but an affirmation of our belief,-most probably the eduction of a prior system of reasoning which we have gone through, and which affords no real solution to the problems. Neither is it an answer to affirm that it was an event predicted by the Lord himself. This is but carrying us one step further back, and still leaves the why and the wherefore enveloped in mystery. Nor is such a reply at all consistent with the general tenor of the New Church writings, which constantly affirm that that which cannot be understood is not believed. Doubtless the original cause of the obscurity is to be found in some remains of the prevailing doctrines of the Christian church, which lead men to suppose that Adam committed a certain sin requiring an infinite satisfaction to appease the justice of an offended God. This satisfaction, from the foreknowledge of God, is supposed to have been arranged prior to the commission of the crime; and that when the Jews had been sufficiently punished by expatriation and slavery for their hardness of heart, the Second Person in the Trinity descended and took on Himself our nature, to pay the penalty of Adam's transgression; and also that so soon as they shall have been again sufficiently punished, for rejecting Him as the Messiah, by being ignominiously treated by every nation, He will again come, commence the Millennium, reinstate them in Palestine, and restore Jerusalem to all its former splendour. Thus it is made to depend entirely on the free grace of God when such an event shall take place.

Such views as these, however, are completely at variance with all we know of the Divine character; for though it must be asserted that the Lord foresaw the necessity of a Second Advent, and by His omniscience knew the time of so great an event, we may with equal propriety make the affirmations-that neither did the necessity arise from anything on His part, nor the time depend entirely on His will. These may, at first sight, appear to many as startling affirmations; but nevertheless Revelation and Reason sanction them. For if the necessity arose from Him, human responsibility must have previously ceased; and if the time depended upon His will, (unless we admit that the event occurred precisely at the moment that it was required,-which amounts to a virtual denial of the principle that it depends on His will) we must equally abandon the truth that the Divine Being never suffers human

freedom to be violated, and screen ourselves behind the dogmas that man is, or at least at a certain time was-if saved at all-saved by special grace. By doing this latter, we incur the awful responsibility of affirming that the Lord had the power of shortening those days of which He said, if not shortened, "no flesh could be saved," yet neglected to do it; that He saw His people perishing, yet held out no friendly arm to save; a responsibility from which every rightly-governed mind will shrink with abhorrence, and to which the infinity of the Lord's love affords the most positive denial.

To prove that the necessity for the Second Advent arose on the part of man, we start with the proposition that he is a created dependent being, deriving life from the Supreme Deity; that he is not possessed of life in himself; but that his life is momentarily received by influx from the Infinite Source of Life, which influx, in an unbroken series, proceeds from Him just as light and heat, its correspondent forms, are radiated from the sun of the natural world. This life, however, though divine and infinite as it proceeds from the Lord, yet becomes finited when it enters the recipient, and when freely received by man it is attributed to him; for by its reception he becomes fully accountable to its Source for the use to which he applies it. This, indeed, is one of the primary grounds of man's responsibility; and to the truth of this doctrine every invitation or denunciation of Scripture bears the fullest evidence.

But does man receive this influx directly from the Lord? We answer, No. For as, by the very formation of our natural organs of vision, it is absolutely necessary that the light of the sun should be modified or accommodated by passing through the atmosphere as a medium; just so, the present imperfect state of our spiritual faculties (or in other words, our state of spiritual defection and evil), render us incapable of receiving the divine life as it proceeds from its Fount, and at once proclaims the necessity for certain mediums, by which that life can be accommodated to our states. We may at once see that this necessity does not arise on the Lord's part, but on ours; for though in a state of purity man might receive the divine life as it proceeds from the Lord, an alteration in the moral character and constitution of the recipient would call for a corresponding alteration in the means or mediums by which life is communicated. It is but reasonable to suppose that those beings who are capable of receiving the divine life. directly from the Lord, should be made the mediums through which its modified rays can be transmitted to a less pure state of the human mind. Not that individually they voluntarily alter the divine life-for

they are not conscious of the operation; but that, as a body, they are constituted by the Lord mediums through which an accommodated life can be communicated to the church and to a lower condition of the human soul.

Now, there has been a certain declension on man's part from a state of purity. He did not at once fall from purity to the depths of impurity, but by steps and gradations. Each step that man fell, then, in consequence of his requiring a still more external degree of life, would call for a different medium, by which divine life—or, what is the same thing, the divine love and wisdom, could be communicated to him; and we may see that every distinct class of being-morally and intellectually, not physically, distinet,-would become the orderly mediums of communicating that life to the class lower than itself; and that thus the celestial and spiritual affections and truths of the church would become more and more natural and external, as man receded from spirituality of mind. That such a fall really took place, and that the church so declined, is evident from the Holy Word. We there find religion, or the church, constantly being accommodated to minds looking more and more to earthly things only; and it declined until at last, just previous to the time of our Lord's First Advent, it was so far divested of all Truth and Good, that the two great divisions are represented as teaching-the one (the Scribes and Pharisees), that the church consisted only in a mere outward observance of certain rituals; the other (the Sadducees), that the soul is not immortal, and consequently that all religion was but a mere form.*

So long as any Truth remained, by it man could be conjoined with heaven. When, however, no Truth or Goodness remained in the church—and consequently when man had broken the connecting link that bound him to God-then arose the necessity for the advent of the Lord. It is evident that from such a state man could not at once be

* That we may see how rapidly this state was brought on, and how effectual was the perversion, it is only necessary to refer to a History of the Jews. We there find that the Pharisees are supposed to have had their origin soon after the return from the Babylonish captivity, and took their name from the Hebrew word Parash, to separate; because they separated themselves from the corruptions and defilements which had crept into the Jewish religion. The Sadducees took their rise from Sadoc, who was a pupil of Antigonus, a celebrated teacher at Jerusalem, who flourished about 260 years B.C. Antigonus taught that "men should not serve God from the expectation of reward, but from love and filial reverence." ." Sadoc either misunderstood or misconstrued his teacher, and taught the non-existence of rewards and punishments after this life, and consequently his followers held as a chief doctrine, "that there is no resurrection,"